The show is based on Han Christian Andersen’s classic fairytale, which inspired “Frozen.”

This weekend, The Cherry Arts will debut its production of “The Snow Queen,” bringing it to the Kitchen Theatre for five performances beginning Friday night. The show is based on Han Christian Andersen’s classic fairytale, which inspired Disney’s hugely popular “Frozen” film.

Written by company artistic director Samuel Buggeln, the show will feature puppets by Scott Hitz of PuppHitz Productions, music by Paul Leschen, and lyrics by Cornell University professor Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon. Co-directed by Buggeln and Hitz, the cast includes Jordan Dunn-Pilz, Jeffrey Guyton, Caroline Maloney, Robin Mazer, Darcy Rose, Camilla Schade, Josh Sedelmeyer and Erica Steinhagen.

Nine months in the making, “The Snow Queen” fits into The Cherry Arts’ mission of developing works over long periods that will showcase experimental, innovative techniques.

“The story was really exciting to us because it is so fantastical,” Buggeln said in a recent interview. “It’s so crazy and trippy — it’s like ‘Alice in Wonderland’ in some ways — that it afforded all these opportunities to figure out how to make talking flowers or ravens, or staging a race between sleighs. It posed all these terrifically exciting problems.

“So we took many months, starting with just our company of actors reading out loud around a table, and figuring out the ways to make it into a play. All these trippy encounters — what do they mean to us and how can we make them vibrant onstage? That’s why it seemed like a perfect Cherry project. It allowed us opportunities to try all sorts of things we haven’t tried before.”

The show also provided a chance to utilize the talents of Hitz, of PuppHitz Productions, whose work was recently featured in the Kitchen Theatre’s “Hand of God” show. “This show allows him a tremendous range of possibilities and challenges,” Buggeln noted. “There are not only conventional puppets, there are shadow puppets, and masks. So it’s a real banquet of crazy theatrical techniques that made it really exciting to cobble together this wild, weird, fantastical play.”

The show features new songs, with lyrics from Van Clief-Stefanon and music by Leschen.

“Lyrae has been a member of our company since the beginning,” Buggeln said. “She was at table the first day, then brainstormed where songs could go and what they would be about. For me, a fairytale tends to be about images and ideas; for her, it was the people and their psychologies and why they go on these adventures. That was something enriching that came out of her lyrics. And then the way I wrote the scenes would build on the instincts that she innovated in her lyrics.”

As for Leschen, Buggeln said: “Paul is a longtime collaborator of mine — he’s based in Brooklyn, but I knew he’d be perfect for this story the way he write songs.”

While Disney adapted “The Snow Queen” for “Frozen,” it substantially changed the plot. “But we found that Andersen’s story really doesn’t want to become a traditional Disney story,” Buggeln noted. “That’s why when they made ‘Frozen,’ it ended up being distant from the original story. That was an opening for us to keep closer to the craziness and kookiness of Andersen’s story. It felt very ‘us’ because it’s so strange and trippy, and we could sit quite close to it and really embrace that weirdness.”

The Cherry Arts hopes to produces “The Snow Queen” annually.

“That was another thing exciting about this project,” Buggeln said. “When the original story is so wild and creative, there’s no problem in envisioning a show that can come back every year and grow with added songs or more puppets or more spectacular staging. As proud as we are of this version, and we are, it still in some ways just the first draft of the show.”

“We talk a lot at the Cherry about innovation and we’re committed to that, but theater also can be about tradition, and something we go back to again and again.”

If you go

Who: The Cherry Arts

What: “The Snow Queen”

When: 7:30 p.m. Friday-Sunday, 2:30 p.m. Saturday and 3 p.m. Sunday

Where: Kitchen Theatre, 417 W. State St., Ithaca

Tickets: Self-determine pricing; recommended donation starting at $18 for children and $30 for adults. Available online at cherrysnowqueen.bpt.me. The show is appropriate for kids 7 and up.